Monday, 31 July 2017

Blog Tour ~ This Beautiful Life by Katie Marsh

Jaffareadstoo is delighted to be hosting today's stop on This Beautiful Life Blog Tour

It gives me great pleasure to welcome the author Katie Marsh

Hi Katie, what can you tell us about This Beautiful Life without
giving too much away?

The book is the story of Abi, who has just survived cancer when the
book starts. It opens with the letter she writes to her husband John and son
Seb just after being diagnosed, and then picks up a year later, when she is
told she is in remission. After a year of treatment she is excited about her
second chance. However, while she’s been ill her husband has made some questionable
decisions, and her son is just starting to face up to a secret of his own. The
novel follows the three of them in the year after she is declared cancer-free,
and it’s all set to the music on her survival playlist.

Abi is the main protagonist of This Beautiful Life. Tell us
about her and why you decided to tell her story?

Before she is diagnosed, Abi is warm, funny and confident - someone
who dances until dawn and who loves her family with her whole heart. However
the year of treatment really shatters her confidence – she doesn’t trust her
own body any more – and she struggles to deal with the secrets that come out as
her and her family ride the shockwaves of her diagnosis and treatment. I
thought of the premise for this book – what happens after cancer? - a long time
ago, but was spurred on to write it when some friends got diagnosed with cancer
in their 30’s. Their bravery was incredible, but they and their families were
all left with changed perspectives on life and on themselves – and not always
in the way I might have expected.

In this novel, Abi is in remission from cancer, in researching the
book did you discover anything which surprised you?

I spoke to a lot of cancer survivors while researching this book,
and I was constantly surprised by what they told me. The main thing was that
before talking to them I had assumed that everyone who survives cancer rushes
into their second chance with huge smiles on their faces, but it simply wasn’t
the case. All of them knew they were lucky to be alive, but some were far more
cautious and fearful than they had been before, going to the GP for the
slightest chill or waking up at night to check if they had any new lumps or
bumps to worry about. That was what I wanted to write about – the gulf between
trusting your own body and not, and between confidence and the lack of it – the
seismic change that having cancer creates in a life, both in the person who has
the disease and also on those around them.

Throughout the novel, Abi has a survival playlist – did you choose
the music to suit the words, or did the words suit the music, and which came
easier – words or music?

Choosing the songs to set the book to was by far the hardest part of
writing it. At one point I had three hundred potential songs on my wall, and I
had to be utterly brutal to get it down to twelve. Abi lives her whole life to
music – she is always singing or turning up the radio - but she chooses her survival playlist entirely
to remind her of the people in her life who really matter – the people she has
to fight for: Vivaldi for her dad; Queen for her husband; Daft Punk for her son
and George Michael for her best friend. Once I had spent several agonizing
nights of the soul picking the tracks, writing the accompanying sleeve notes
was an absolute breeze.

Whilst you are writing you must live with your characters. Do they
ever dictate how the story progresses or do you stick with a writing plan from
the beginning and never deviate?

I always have a very clear idea of the premise, of where a story
will start, and of the characters who will play their parts in a book. However,
I never really know where a book is going to end – I like to find my way
alongside my characters. The ending I thought I might be heading towards in
This Beautiful Life isn’t the one in the final version, and so –yes – the
characters led me to it. When I’m researching and planning a book, I tend to
think in emotional moments – my attic wall is covered with them – and I find my
way between them as I write, rather than plotting things out in a more formal
way.

Your style of writing is very much ‘from the heart’. Does this take
its toll on you emotionally, and if so, how do you overcome it?

I live my whole life from the heart - my friends and family would
confirm this I’m sure - my daughter is a familiar with the concept of my ‘happy
crying’ as she is with fish fingers or Lego cards. I do get a huge writing
hangover when I’ve finished a book and I go to ground for a few weeks before
gradually coming back to life and resting enough to get into gear for my next
book. I can’t move straight from one to another – there needs to be some
downtime in between.

When I first started writing twelve years ago I almost tried to
avoid my naturally heartfelt tendency and I didn’t connect with my stories in
the way that I do now. As a result my first two novels weren’t published and it
was only when I took the emotional gloves off – and learnt from writers that I
love like Rowan Coleman or Patrick Ness – that my writing really took flight.

Again, without giving too much away, what do you hope readers will
take away from This Beautiful Life?

I hope that readers will be moved, uplifted and will feel the need
to run off and tell their friends and families how much they love them.

Huge thanks to Katie for being my guest today and for her kind invitation to be part of her blog tour, and, of course, for sharing her lovely story with me. Thanks also to Emma at Hodder for her invitation to be part of the Blog Tour.